On 1 January 1991, after years of division, the collections of the Prussian Cultural Heritage scattered between East and West were reunited. 25 people tell their stories.
After decades of division, reunification also brought together in the archives, libraries and museums of the Prussian Cultural Heritage what had belonged together and yet had been separated by the Wall. But it was not only pictures, books and documents that were reunited. People from East and West Berlin also had to get used to each other again. Twenty-five people talk about this exciting and not always entirely smooth process - and report on how it opened up completely new perspectives and fundamentally changed the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.
They have witnessed and helped to shape the reunification of the collections: in Berlin-Mitte, Charlottenburg, Dahlem and Köpenick. They are stories of upheaval and relocation, of promise and doubt, of self-assertion and compromise.
They tell of big steps: the reconstruction of Museum Island, the reorganisation of the Staatsbibliothek's collections or the opening of the Gemäldegalerie at the Kulturforum. But they also tell of lesser-known things: the return of files from the Prussian Secret State Archives from Merseburg, the struggle of the staff of the East Berlin Museum of Decorative Arts for their Köpenick Palace or the feelings of the scholars at being able to view the other part of the collection for the first time.
This dossier brings together articles from SPK magazine issue 2/2015, which was published in January 2016. The magazine was supported by the Kuratorium Preußischer Kulturbesitz.